BIG PINE KEY, FLORIDA-

We are traveling in the rain. We have been traveling in the rain for 6 days. It has rained on us for 6 nights and we are settling in for more. It is wet.

Incredibly, Atlanta has made headlines for its continued drought. We have brought rain here. It started to rain on us in Kentucky, and now in Central Florida– also newsworthy for desert-like conditions– it rains on us still. It has followed us here for the relief of the local flora and fauna. On us, it sincerely sucks. Our Airstream leaks.

It is a wonderful trailer, and indeed, many other 21st Century carnies such as ourselves are beginning to buy vintage coaches, trick them out and hit the road. It really is the best way to travel if you’re show folk. Ours has a leak, possibly two, and more, certainly four or five, when being pulled headlong into showers and sweeping curtains of thunderstorms at 60 MPH. And so it leaks.

Everything is inside is damp, or outright soaked. Nothing dries, since there has been at most an intermission of only a few hours. It’s really crazy making.

I wash the truck– instantly Rain. After three dry days, I set up to test for leaks on the Airstream– Instantly Rain.

20 years ago in Indiana we experienced such a terrible drought and heat wave that full grown trees died due to lack of moisture in the soil. Plans for excavations were canceled as the soil was too dust-like to safely dig; the sides simply caved in. Miles upon miles of interstate roadsides were charred by grass fires started by tossed cigarettes. The foliage was bone dry and dead.

The attendant heat wave was so profound that sound was muffled dead in the air. I would sign off the radio station I was working at announcing 103º temperatures at midnight.

After such a climatic calamity I swore I would never begrudge the rain. Hard to remember after 6 days and nights of RAIN.

The folks here are suffering from lack of rain. We crossed over the Suwannee River, as in the famous Stephen Foster song, and saw it to be a dry sandy river bed. We stopped in High Springs, and saw signs asking to Vote “no” for permits to bottled water developers whose efforts drop the local water table and disrupt the famous caves and springs here — long a Scuba diving mecca. Even in Florida, known for flooding, storms and beaches, water has become serious business.

But the rain received here with such gratitude has fallen on us for hundreds of miles. Makes you feel rather out of touch. How like the unreal world of touring as sideshow performers. Our real-est reality is otherworldly. Are we shaman or merely migrant workers? I decide to figure it all out when the sun shines in my face once more.

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